Tag Archives: The great outdoors – That’s the thing about the desert, I think. You have to work a little bit more to love it. To slow down, to really see. To appreciate the little flower buds among the thorns; the rabbits and road runners; the harshness of the environment. If you do, you may just be offered a special reward.  There are a few epic travel tales that I’ve known about Bruno for as long as I’ve known him. They’ve been repeated, misty-eyed, so many times they are etched in my mind like family legends. One of them is about the sea turtles of Mexico. It goes something like this.  Fifty kilometers east of Mexico City, the little village of Nanacamilpa welcomes visitors every summer evening to their now-infamous firefly sanctuary. Tonight I am one of those visitors, riding past the potato and corn fields into the pine forest, a sprinkle of raindrops blurring my eyesight. I am not arriving to the firefly sanctuary in our Big Blue Bus, but on the back of a quad, with three police escorts.  In all things travel – as in parenthood, I’m finding out – we have to expect the unexpected. Oftentimes, our expectations lead to disappointment; our plans have to change; and the pleasant surprises are found in the least-likely places. That’s what our recent time in the Smokies – and Alabama – reminded me.  Of all the wildlife encounters I’ve had (and there have been many!), spotting whales has always been one of my favourite. It was no surprise, then, that when I learned that we could see beluga whales in Quebec’s Fjord du Saguenay, or any of thirteen species of whale in the Saint Lawrence River, I was in! |
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